Kaylin Thach, Adriana Thach and Madison Clark, from Valley Elementary, work with their robots at the Valley Robotics Mini Meet.

Mustang Valley's Robotics Team recently hosted a mini meet to share their coding skills with parents and teachers. This is the first year for Valley's Robotics Team. Members range from kindergarten to fourth grade. The school has five teams of four students each, two for Bot Ball and three Pro Bot teams.

At the mini-meet, students demonstrated how they process on paper with their notebooks, plan and prepare their codes and discussed the parts of the robots and their function.

Robin Combs, robotics sponsor, said the Pro Bots and Bot Ball robots were coded and programmed by family members and faculty, guided the robotics team.

"Each team had different challenges using their Bot Ball mat and our Pro Bots team created their own 'Bot Town' to demonstrate the capabilities of their robots," she said.

Combs said Valley started with 65 students attending Robotics Club meetings once a month since November. They moved to twice a month meetings. Students had to submit essays on why they wanted to be on the robotics team to be considered.

"Bot Ball Challenges allow students to participate on their level and challenges are a great place to learn from other teams and from the Bot Ball staff," she said. "When our teams wanted to try something harder at the challenge, the staff was very good at instructing our students on using new equipment and writing new codes. The Challenge experience is one of extended learning and reaching beyond our expectations."